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Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writings, 1942-1945 (Asian America)
Morning Glory Evening Shadow Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writings 19421945 - Asian America Author:Yamato Ichihashi, Gordon H. Chang This book has a dual purpose. The first is to present a biography of Yamato Ichihashi, a Stanford University professor who was one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the United States. The second purpose is to present, through Ichihashi's wartime writings, the only known comprehensive first person account of internment l... more »ife by one of the 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who, in 1942, was sent by the U.S. government to "relocation centers," the euphemism for prison camps.
Ichihashi, 64 years old at the start of internment, knew the historical significance of the trials before him and decided, even before leaving the campus, that he would record his experiences in order one day to write an account of his life in wartime America. He never completed his project, however, and after his death in 1963, his family donated his papers to the Hoover Institution; they were later transferred to Standford University's Green Library. Packed in storage boxes for over 25 years, his correspondence with colleagues during the war, his research essays on relocation, and portions of his personal diaries lay virtually untouched. What an oversight! They form perhaps the richest extant personal account of internment, yet, despite the considerable attention focused on the Japanese American experience during World War II in recent years, no one had given them serious attention.
After surveying the papers, I decided for a variety of reasons -- my wish to honor his memory, the contribution his papers make to understanding internment history, the deeply poignant human story contained in his documents -- that I would try to organize his papers and present them in such a way that his long-unfinished account of internment would, in a sense, finally see the light of day. I would like to think that Ichihashi, if he was with us today, would forgive my presumption.